ISC Cloud’14 at a Glance

This year’s ISC Cloud conference will be the fifth in the series and will continue the tradition of bringing experts and users from industry and academia to foster collaboration and innovation in the field of cloud computing. The conference will be held in Heidelberg at the Marriott Hotel from September 29 to 30, 2014, followed by ISC Big Data, from October 1–2. Registration will be available in early June.

Program Highlights

Hands-on Tutorial: Accessing and Using HPC Clouds for Science and Engineering The number of cloud providers is growing steadily, and it’s challenging for users to identify the best-suited providers for their application and business requirements. ISC shall invite different providers to the tutorial to introduce and guide users through the process of accessing and using their cloud resources, and teach them how this can benefit their work and organization as a whole. Previous cloud experiment clients will also join this tutorial to share their lessons learned and offer valuable recommendations for new users.

Industry and Research Case Studies With new technologies and paradigms appearing over the horizon, nothing is more valuable than the personal experiences of users who are working on similar applications and challenges to your own. Therefore, ISC has invited expert end users from engineering and life sciences research and industry who — as early adopters — will report on their experience with accessing and using private and public cloud resources. They look forward to presenting their successful use of scientific and engineering computing in the cloud and sharing their implementations.

Digital Manufacturing and Life Sciences According to IDC, digital manufacturing and life sciences form the largest HPC markets. However, less than 10 percent of engineers and scientists are actively using HPC servers to simulate and analyze data. More than 90 percent are still exclusively dependent on workstations. Cloud computing enables engineers and scientists to use HPC as a service, complementing the desktop workstation environment. ISC has invited expert speakers from the engineering and life science community to present their experience with such heterogeneous in-house/cloud infrastructure.

Hot Topics: Security, Data Transfer, Federated Clouds, and Performance Despite the benefits of cloud computing and the decade-plus of research that supports its use, we still face some critical challenges in deploying this technology. Users are still worried about security and privacy issues; gigabytes of resulting data can easily take several hours to transfer to cloud environments; and not all cloud architectures deliver the performance the user’s applications need. Expert speakers will address these issues and discuss possible solutions.

Expert Panel on Application Software in the Cloud Application software is the single most important component of the cloud environment. Users are demanding that their applications are able to run in the cloud, but many software providers are concerned about losing customers and existing business if they support such a model. ISC has invited experts from independent software vendors (ISVs) to discuss with end- users and cloud providers the challenges and solutions of providing flexible and dynamic licensing schemes for the cloud, resulting in a win-win situation for all parties.

In addition, the conference will provide a keynote address, an HPC Meets Cloud panel featuring software and hardware cloud sponsors, and an evening get-together at the Neckar River. There will also be ample time for meetings and discussions.